Musical Chores: 10 songs that artists were forced to record
Songwriting is usually supposed to be fun. There might be a few classics that are a nightmare trying to complete, but when you get that first idea for a tune coming together in the studio, there’s no other feeling in the world that can possibly compare to it. That’s when everything was going smoothly, but classic artists like Stevie Nicks ended up having some signature tunes thrust upon them instead of making them with love.
While every artist tries to flex their writing chops as much as possible, these tracks were cut at the insistence of either the label or the producer. Now, instead of writing something from the heart, this was the kind of songwriting that could have been read off of cue cards, almost like fans could see the puppeteers in the background telling them to play a track a certain way or hop on whatever trend was happening at the time.
It’s one thing to have this kind of problem with a cover, but it’s all the more tragic when one of the artist’s own ideas gets this kind of treatment. They may have wanted to give their track some more space to breathe, but now they had to put together a labour of love from scratch and try their best to make it sound like it came straight from the heart.
Granted, it’s easy to see what some of the tunes were going for, but it’s no surprise that many of them got either relegated to B-sides or dropped altogether when sequencing the album for the first time. If you look hard enough, though, what an artist may have agonised over also had the potential to become their signature hit if they had the right idea.
10 songs that artists were forced to record:
10. ‘Don’t Let The Sun Go Down On Me’ – Elton John
No one goes to an Elton John concert expecting something heavy. Throughout his career, the pianist has been a master at bringing incredible melodic lines to life, even if some, like ‘Crocodile Rock’, border on the ear-grating. However, even John had his limits for schmaltzy material. He hated ‘Don’t Let the Sun Go Down on Me’ from the moment he brought it into the studio.
For all of the great pieces of the tune, John thought it was far too sweet for him to be singing. Despite the fact that this was coming from the same guy who had made tracks like ‘Candle in the Wind’, John wouldn’t budge during the initial session, nearly storming out of the studio and insisting that they get someone else to finish the job for him.
When producer Gus Dudgeon got the one good take, that was more than enough, which went on to become one of the biggest hits of his career afterwards. Is it corny? Maybe a little bit, but if John could play it at Wembley Stadium alongside George Michael and still manage to get everyone singing along to it, it hardly matters whether his credentials were getting called into question.
9. ‘Here My Dear’ – Marvin Gaye
Love can be one of the greatest inspirations when writing any ballad. Even though many people like to sing about the larger issues of the world, no one can really go wrong when they open their hearts to the people and receive that kind of love in return from the fans. Then again, there are two sides to romance, and rarely had Marvin Gaye sounded more bitter and angry when tearing through ‘Here My Dear’.
Most of the album of the same name is about Gaye’s contractual commitment to make an album for his wife, but the fallout of their divorce led to this tune sounding incredibly half-hearted. For someone known for making the greatest love jams of all time, hearing him talk so matter-of-factly about how much he doesn’t love his wife and bringing the kids into the situation just makes everything sound sad.
There’s hardly any moment on this record that’s easy on the ears, but it feels less like Gaye doesn’t know what he’s doing and more like he is orchestrating an emotional car crash for himself. He knew that the marriage wasn’t going to work out, so why not try to tear down everything along with him as he sank to his lowest point?
8. The entire Rock ‘n’ Roll Album – John Lennon
The ‘business’ side of the term ‘music business’ is still one of the nastiest parts of any record deal. As much as artists might like the idea of having a massive distributor for their work, not all of them tend to realise what they’re getting themselves into when they sign that contract in the first place. Even when you were a part of one of the biggest bands in the world, John Lennon wasn’t safe from having to make an album as a work job on Rock ‘n’ Roll.
If anything this should have been a way to get the ‘Intellectual Beatle’ back to his roots. He had made several albums that were about peeling back the layers of his mind, so bringing back his rock chops should have been fine, as long as there wasn’t also a massive lawsuit breathing down his neck. As part of a lawsuit between Lennon and Chuck Berry’s production company, his pinching of ‘You Can’t Catch Me’ for The Beatles’ ‘Come Together’ led to him recording this album as a compromise.
And where Plastic Ono Band sounded deliberately rough around the edges, this practically has every blemish on full display, coming from Lennon’s ‘Lost Weekend’ when he was drinking nonstop and living the life of what a rock god was supposed to be. Every Lennon solo release usually had a specific agenda in mind, but while it’s nice to hear him embrace his roots, it’s hard to look at this album and not see Lennon going through one of the roughest times of his life.
7. ‘The Unforgiven II’ – Metallica
‘The Unforgiven’ should really be considered a watershed moment in the story of Metallica. They had done ballads before, but hearing James Hetfield sing from the heart about wanting love but never being able to feel it marked the moment when everyone saw the vulnerable man underneath those mutton chops. So naturally if it worked the first time,it was only a matter of time before everyone wanted to hear the same thing again.
Although the thrash legends’ Load era is still considered one of the worst points in their career, ‘The Unforgiven II’ is halfway to a great tune, even echoing its musical parents’ chorus when everything breaks down. The song isn’t that bad, all things considered, but Hetfield said that the version that we hear today probably should have spent a little more time in the oven before it was put out.
The frontman had always intended on writing a follow-up somewhere down the road, but since their double album experience was short one track, he figured that he would try his best to write the same thing again with only a few years of experience in between them. It’s still a decent piece of pop-flavoured metal, but given how weathered and experienced ‘The Unforgiven III’ sounds on 2008’s Death Magnetic, it’s a shame that the first sequel didn’t get the same treatment.
6. ‘Handle With Care’ – Traveling Wilburys
For any record label, no amount of material can ever be considered too much. Not all of them may be hits, but if they know they have struck gold with a particular artist, they will put out anything with them on it, even if it only consisted of them reading out what they had for breakfast that morning. So when George Harrison came back after years away from the fold, the label’s insistence on one more tune led to one of the greatest supergroups of all time.
Since Harrison didn’t have the studio time booked for a B-side, so he cut ‘Handle With Care’ with Jeff Lynne at Bob Dylan’s home studio. But once they got paid a visit by Roy Orbison and Harrison picked up his guitar from Tom Petty’s house, the label knew this kind of meeting was far too good to just throw out as a throwaway on a single.
Because it was so much fun, it wasn’t too much to ask for the five friends to throw together another bunch of tunes, using ‘Handle With Care’ as the reference point for everything. Labels can screw artists over in ways that no one could even imagine, but this is one of the few instances where their instincts actually made for one of the greatest, happiest accidents in rock and roll.
5. ‘Dancing in the Street’ – Van Halen
Given the amount of touring they had done by the early 1980s, Van Halen had earned a well-deserved break by 1982. They had made four perfect albums in a row and appeased their label to no end, so everyone should have had time to go back home and recharge their batteries before going right back into the studio. Then David Lee Roth got an idea, and it would continue to haunt the group for the next few months.
After their cover of Roy Orbison’s ‘Pretty Woman’ started climbing up the charts, the label forced them to cut a few more tunes for a new album, which became Diver Down. Most of the project is just a bunch of odds and ends from throughout their career, but Eddie remembered being pissed off with them doing a version of the classic ‘Dancing in the Street’, especially when he never got credit for the original piece of music that comes right before it.
Then again, since Roth is hamming it up to the max on every section and the rest of the group provides backing vocals, this doesn’t really scan as a proper Van Halen track. If anything, it feels like a David Lee Roth solo joint that happens to feature all the band members on their respective instruments.
4. ‘What’s Love Got To Do With It’ – Tina Turner
Tina Turner never apologised for having rock and roll roots. She did have more than a few soul chops through working with her husband Ike for so many years, but there was a reason why she was known for covering people like Creedence Clearwater Revival and The Beatles rather than just trying to go for the same tried-and-true soulful ballads. So when she was on the verge of making her comeback, the last thing that she wanted to do was make something as milquetoast as ‘What’s Love Got To Do With It’.
Since this was supposed to be her grand entrance back into mainstream music, this was the kind of disposable pop hit that she was against in the first place. Turner’s heart may have been in making rockers like ‘Steel Claw’ instead, but she was eventually convinced to give it a go by her producer, and the energy radiating off her voice was electric from the minute she started singing.
There were other artists who had tried to make their massive comebacks before, but ‘What’s Love Got To Do With It’ may as well have been Turner’s life story up until that point. She had been mistreated in ways that no one on this Earth should be, and yet her taking all that emotion off the table was the sound of a woman completely reborn.
3. ‘How Do You Do It’ – The Beatles
Any songwriter would count themselves lucky to have any track that’s half as good as one of The Beatles’ worst projects. Even when they struck out now and then, the Fab Four’s track record looks pretty flawless when put next to both their peers and every other generation that has come in their wake. Before they even got a chance to make their own ideas in the studio, they eventually got strong-armed into cutting one of their most toothless tracks by George Martin.
For all of the praise that Martin gets as the ‘Fifth Beatle’, his choice for them to record a version of Mitch Murray’s ‘How Do You Do It’ would have never taken them anywhere. The harmonies are fairly strong and the lads play it competently, but there’s no real character behind the performances, to the point where it’s easy to picture most of them completely stone-faced singing it in the studio.
Despite not being anything that spectacular, the pop schlock did give them a firm kick in the ass, eventually being the inspiration for them to work harder on ‘Please Please Me’, which Martin added his own signature spice to. ‘How Do You Do It’ did become a hit thanks to Gerry and the Pacemakers, but if this lacklustre track didn’t fall into The Beatles’ hands first, maybe Lennon and McCartney would never have the drive to take even more chances down the road.
2. ‘Mary Jane’s Last Dance’ – Tom Petty
Greatest hits records are never really meant to have any kind of artistic value to them. An artist can express themselves on an album, so to have pieces of the record disassembled and thrown together into one compilation record is usually a sign that the label needs money while they all pay off their expensive vacations. Tom Petty wasn’t the kind of artist who cowered to those kinds of obligation albums anyway, but when MCA Records demanded one more record, he did get one of his biggest hits out of the deal.
Even though Petty was in the process of painting his masterpiece with Wildflowers, he had to make time out of the studio to cut ‘Mary Jane’s Last Dance’ for his greatest hits album. What Petty had wasn’t more than a fragment when it got started, but once the original Heartbreakers got together in the same room again, it felt like a strange form of high school reunion, with everyone playing their ass off behind the heartland rocker.
Those good times weren’t really meant to last, though, with drummer Stan Lynch ditching the sessions just a few weeks later before being rewarded with a phone call saying he’d been fired from the group. But looking at the timeline of Petty’s career, this feels like the bridge between his hit-making days before making music only for himself on records like The Last DJ and Hypnotic Eye.
1. ‘I Don’t Wanna Know’ – Fleetwood Mac
No artist really has to worry about the confines of the record format anymore. An album can go as long as it wants on streaming, so who cares if it doesn’t match up to the physical medium of CDs? Now, everyone has their favourites at their fingertips, but in the late 1970s, vinyl was still king, and Stevie Nicks had to accept a hard truth when laying down tracks for Fleetwood Mac’s Rumours.
While there’s a case to be made for every band member suffering during production, Nicks at least had one great song in ‘Silver Springs’. It was written about her breaking up with Lindsey Buckingham and her way of shutting the door on that side of her career. Ultimately, it was too damn long to fit on the final side of the record.
Nicks did have another ditty to replace it with, but she wasn’t shy about not wanting to record ‘I Don’t Want To Know’, thinking that she may as well have had to sing it at gunpoint compared to her other great tracks. Maybe that makes for a more cohesive listening experience on headphones, but considering ‘Silver Springs’ had more to do with the album’s story, hearing her intentionally make something more lighthearted feels like the listener is being pulled out of the melodrama for a quick second.
